New York Markets After Hours

The measure of an employee

Commentary: Height joins list of workplace biases

ChrisPummer

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Hiring and promotion bias comes in all shapes and sizes. We can now add height discrimination to the favoritisms list.

A new study shows tall people earn a steep pay premium, like ones already found for people with the genetic advantages of being attractive and svelte.

The study conducted by University of Florida professor Timothy Judge and University of North Carolina professor Daniel Cable revealed that people in the U.S. and U.K. earn an extra $789 a year in pay, per inch of height. In other words, someone 6-foot-tall could expect to earn about $5,525 more than someone of the same sex standing 5-foot-5.

"If you take this over the course of a 30-year career and compound it, we're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings advantage that a tall person enjoys," Judge said.

Americans and Britons earning less than they might have hoped shouldn't bemoan not graduating from Harvard or Cambridge. Instead, it may just be an accident of birth: They didn't inherit the height gene from their lanky grandfather or statuesque grandmother and got saddled instead with the runt-of-the-litter one.

It also suggests anyone who thinks race and sex discrimination isn't prevalent in the U.S. work force today is dismissing reality. After all, if managers reward employees for such factors as height, looks and body shape, is there any doubt they also do so based on skin color and an X or Y chromosome?

Tally up the biases, and a short, unattractive, chubby minority woman has five strikes against her before she's even seen a pitch.

Contributing factors

Self-confidence certainly may play a part in why tall, good-looking and shapely people earn more. The study found the income premium for taller people was especially pronounced in sales and management positions -- where success can hinge on having strong self-esteem.

Judge says the bias may be a throwback to prehistoric times when humans lived among animals and an individual's size was an index of power and strength.

"When humans still lived in the jungles or on the plain, they ascribed leader-like qualities to tall people because they thought they would be better able to protect them," Judge said. "Although that was thousands of years ago, evolutionary psychologists would argue that some of those old patterns still operate in our perceptions today."

Certainly, the bias is borne out in our preference of national leaders. Judge notes that not since William McKinley in 1896 has the United States we elected a president shorter than the average U.S. male. And critics ridiculed McKinley -- at a still fairly sizable 5-foot-7 -- as a "little boy."

Yet the study also showed a height advantage in pay for employees in less social occupations, such as engineering, accounting, computer programming and clerical work. In almost any realm, taller people command a pay premium for simply being looked up to.

American job and earnings bestowers embrace a misperception it's better to promote taller people than smaller ones who might run rings around them. Height simply is no gauge of leadership ability. The expression "big dope" springs to mind.

If your boss doesn't measure up to what you think a good boss should be, he or she may just be a big lunkhead skilled at masking intellectual deficits.

Hormone therapy

Some parents, sensing the value of height in their children's future, are giving their youngsters growth hormones to boost their chances of success. These, of course, are probably the same Spartans who hold their July birthday offspring back a year in school for competitive advantage, even though studies show any early-maturity edge dissipates by fourth grade.

Want to figure out how much more or less you may be earning than the average American, based on your height?

The average American male today stands 5-foot-9 and the average female is just shy of 5-foot-4. If you think you've been held back in your earnings potential, consider that as a yardstick.

The researchers behind the height-pay study ultimately may have struck upon the reason people reach their peak earnings in their late 40s -- they're not victims of age discrimination, they maxed out because they're beginning to shrink.

The bottom line: When it comes to hiring and promotions, even in the 21st century, U.S. employers still have some growing up to do.

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